


restore

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 09:10:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4095244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>bring back (a previous right, practice, custom, or situation)</p><hr/><p>Jack, Crow, Yuusei & an irreplaceable bond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The rain that fell in Satellite was just as dirty as the air — tinged with the same blackness that rose out of the factories. Martha had a special rain collector system set up for the garden next to the house, gutters used gravity to run the water through filters and then evenly across the small crops they kept. As soon as he was old enough to reach, it was Yuusei’s job to pick any dead leaves out of the filters and change them when they got too old. He liked that kind of chore and always took the time to check the tin and recycled plastic troughs for wear and tear. When they broke down the whole thing had to be taken apart, metal and plastic melted and bent to create smooth waterways that didn’t leak. But Martha insisted it was worth it — clean food, clean water and clean soil meant you would live well, even in a place like Satellite. Plus, the chores always kept the boys busy.

They discovered the large drain pipe on a rainy afternoon. Someone had passed a rumor around that on certain days, the owners of the factories would drive through the junkyard valleys in their fancy cars and if they were lucky you might be able to nick something from their cars if they stopped for gas or to inspect something. Jack had just turned eleven and while he proclaimed he was above such thievery, he came anyway. Crow was certain that if they saw something good it would either be useful around the house or could be traded for something even better. There was certainly no harm in dreaming, anyway. Yuusei had been glad that they were all going together.

The cars never came and by late afternoon the skies had opened up and begun pouring rain down. They were too far from home to make a dash for it, so they sought shelter in other places. Years ago, it had probably been a large drain pipe for the refinery that used to be there. But time had cleaned out the sewage and the fresh air and moisture had coaxed moss and vines up into the concrete. The refinery was long destroyed, a casualty to Zero Reverse, but hints of the foundation, along with other debris remained.

“Hey, look at this!” Crow plunged his hands into a pile of moss, tore at it and unearthed a treasure. Jack crossed his arms, only looking at the find briefly, before his gaze flicked out towards the mouth of the drain pipe again. _He_ wasn’t so sure that they weren’t trespassing, and had no intention of letting the three of them get caught. Even though Satellite wasn’t like the city, there were still some territorial groups, and ending up on the wrong side of their temper or ownership was never a good thing.

“A toolbox.” Yuusei was enthralled and he and Crow set about opening it up.

“Not even that rusted!” Crow exclaimed. “What a good find! Totally worth it!”

“You’re so loud.” Jack hissed. Their voices echoed in the large cement pipe, and while they knew where one end was, the pipe itself seemed to continue into forever blackness in the other direction.

“Don’t be lame, you’re just mad we found it and you didn’t.”

“I can find something much better.”

“Jack was looking out, though…” Yuusei put in a good word for him, but it only seemed to incense Jack even more. He jabbed a finger at them.

“Trying to make this into a competition, huh!? I’ll _definitely win!_ ” And Jack turned on his heel and started marching further into the pipe.

“Jack — “ Yuusei scrambled up after him. Crow groaned and grabbed a wrench and screwdriver from the toolbox before following as well. He didn’t expect someone to come along after and pilfer from their find, but it was better to grab what he could, just in case.

In the end, Jack found a box of nails, still wrapped in plastic and not rusted at all. He argued it was a better find that Crow’s toolbox, since they were in pristine condition and he could carry the box himself, where Crow and Yuusei had to each take a side of the toolbox to get it back to Martha’s. That became their sanctuary, over the years. It was just far enough away from the house that it felt private and secret, it had a roof and they would never find the end to the drain pipe, because it disappeared deep into the earth.

Two years after their discovery, Crow and Yuusei go without Jack — because Jack broke his arm falling off the roof. Yuusei hadn’t wanted to go without him, but when he’d poked his head into Jack’s room again Jack had thrown a book at his head.

“He’ll be happier if we pretend nothing’s changed,” Crow said, cheerfully, and dragged Yuusei out to the drain pipe. “Let’s go as far as we can and if we find anything good we’ll bring it back to him as a present.”

“He’ll complain,” Yuusei said, but the idea buoyed him anyway. Jack complained about a lot of things, but he also kept a small stash of every gift that Crow and Yuusei had ever given him over the years. There was the twist of metal Crow had pulled out of a junk heap shaped like a ‘J’, the card case Yuusei had made out of old coffee tins, two long slender beads Yuusei and Crow had fashioned out of broken glass from car windows that had taken them months to sand down to smooth. 

“So, we’ll just make him jealous that he fell off the stupid roof anyway.”

Crow bumped shoulders with Yuusei as they walked — familiar, companionable. Yuusei, instead of returning the gesture, reached down and grabbed Crow’s hand firmly. It surprised Crow, he stared down at their joined hands and then laughed.

“Sorry,” Yuusei said, but didn’t let go.

“Now Jack will really be jealous. Next time we all come out, he’ll make us both hold his hand.” Crow’s laughter echoed down the pipe out in front of them.

“. . . Serves him right,” Yuusei murmured, quietly, and shook his flashlight a little, coaxed the bulb into action. The drain pipe had a gentle slope that carried them further down and every time they ventured deep into it there was always something new to discover. A few weeks ago they had found a pile of broken ceramic cups that seemed out of place. Before that, a bunch of broken computers that Yuusei had gleefully salvaged.

“I can kind of understand though,” Crow didn’t shake his hand free of Yuusei’s. He kept his eyes on the floor, scanned for anything that might look interesting as they walked. “His feelings, I mean.”

“Aa, me too.”

“You say that, Yuusei, but — oh, look! We haven’t been here before,” Crow cut himself off and pulled Yuusei forward. In the middle of the drain pipe was a section of rubble that might have come down through the ceiling, but among it were what looked like old decaying clothes and jewelry, of all things. As if a department store had collapsed through the earth, years ago, and they had just rediscovered it. “Most of this is worthless, but we might find something good.” Yuusei nodded and helped Crow sort through it, looking for something special.

A year later, they all shuffled out of Martha’s. It wasn’t unusual, of course. She wouldn’t have asked them to stay, because children would be children and the house was always overflowing. She would have let them, though, but late at night the three of them had already decided. They were old enough, they were strong enough, they could do this.

It was a year of elation. Crow explained it first, their third night of living on their own in the abandoned building they had commandeered and put noisemaker traps in every doorway and window.

“This is cooler than having a family, not that I’d know.” Then Crow laughed and leaned back on the pile of blankets. They had traded some of Yuusei’s tools and called in one of Jack’s favors for their bedding. Jack didn’t have the same mechanical sense Yuusei did and wasn’t a thief like Crow, but almost everyone in the neighborhood knew him. He was taller than most of the kids their age already and had made a name for him in small scraps.

“Then why say it?” Jack grumbled.

“Because, neither of you is going to say it.” Crow pointed out. “Yuusei isn’t asleep, he’s just being quiet.”

Yuusei opened one eye, then and looked over at them.

“Yuusei!” Jack sat up and jabbed a finger at him. “You said you were going to bed.”

“We’re all in bed.” Yuusei pointed out. “And Crow’s right. This is nice.”

“It could be better.” Jack looked out the window. A string with two pieces of thing metal hanging from it cut his vision in two. The noisemakers were to alert them if anyone tried to come in and take what few things they had. Jack’s valuables were all small and kept on his person, but both Crow and Yuusei had amassed a collection of computer parts that were worth enough to be tempting targets.

“I don’t mind it, since we’re together.” Yuusei shut his eyes again.

“You’re too easily pleased, what if you grew a spine and some ambition Yuusei — “ Jack was cut off as Crow used one of his blankets as a flay and hit him in the face with it.

“Shut up, I’m trying to sleep.”

It was imperfect but it was home. They made do with what they had and fortified their windows and built a door. They bartered enough to trade up to better bedding and Yuusei even coaxed an old trashed refrigerator into life and tapped it into a hacked power grid. The year passed quickly and pleasantly.

It wasn’t going to last.

The year they all turn fourteen — Jack first, then Yuusei and Crow, later more or less since none of them really _knew_ their birthdays but had decided them — something changed. Jack, who had chosen the first month of the year for his birthday usually proclaimed it loudly, demanded to be paid attention to, announced how this was simply another sign of his conviction, his drive to be on top, said nothing. Over half a year later, when Yuusei turned fourteen he walked out of their shared home and was gone for three days. Around the same time, Crow returned to Martha’s for a month, spent time with the kids there and found that he missed them.

Yuusei didn’t get frustrated easily, he had a plodding patience that irritated Jack to no end. But after Yuusei returned from his trip to _somewhere_ , frustration was written all over his face.

“Crow’s still at Martha’s,” Jack offered, to break the silence.

Yuusei’s set jaw hardened even more. He sat down at the table — salvaged and re-legged and sturdy — and started tinkering with a small engine he had been working on before he left. Jack leaned against the wall and watched and waited. He couldn’t remember a time when Yuusei had seemed this moody before, not in _anger_.

“It isn’t working.” Yuusei said, finally. He picked up the small engine and then put it back down. There was a tremor in his hand — the kind of shake that Jack understood, a kind of helpless anger that drove him — but it disappeared quickly. Yuusei slumped in his chair and sighed. “Let’s go back there, maybe we’ll find something new.”

Jack wanted to tell him that there wasn’t any way they would find something new at that old drain pipe. That it was a problem, the way Yuusei always returned to old habits, old places and old memories as a way to try to move forward. The past was an anchor, not a way to better oneself. Instead he just nodded.

The moss had grown all over the lip of the drain pipe and made it slippery. Yuusei didn’t seem to even notice, before sat down and let his feet dangle over the edge. Jack stood beside him, he had no intention of sitting.

“Everything here . . .” Yuusei trailed off.

“Is garbage,” Jack finished for him.

“Jack.”

“Aren’t you thinking that there’s more?” Jack accused. “There’s more to life than just scavenging for scraps and hoping things will get better? You won’t find it here.”

Yuusei looked up at him, a small intense frown on his face. It was the expression he wore when he’d found a particularly difficult problem to tackle — rewiring, programming, trying to think of the perfect favor or gift for a dear friend.

“And where are you going to find it, Jack?”

“At least I’m looking for it! You’re — impossible!”

“I’ve been thinking, it isn’t so bad.”

“Then stay here and think that.” Jack turned on his heel, ripped a chunk out of the moss with the movement and climbed down out of the drain pipe. It was too frustrating for him, too, to watch Yuusei swallow his own frustration and refuse to move forward.

By the time Kiryuu entered their lives, even Crow was questioning if there was anything better. Or maybe Crow had been the first one to think of it, when he realized he wanted to make the world better for the kids who came after them. Kiryuu offered a very simple solution. Satellite needed to get better, so they would make it better.

It was around the same time that Jack figured out every dream was corrupt. He and Crow fight about it, when Yuusei and Kiryuu go off to scout a location by themselves.

“This isn’t enough,” Jack had noticed it, first. He hadn’t figured it out — not yet — but even though they were reclaiming pieces of Satellite, nothing had changed. Nothing got better. People were still hungry, the streets were still dirty, he was still in the same place as before.

“Hah?”

“What we’re doing, it’s . . . _small._ ”

“Don’t you ever think about right now, instead of whatever you’re looking at?” Crow snorted and shook his head. “We’re doing what we can. And there’s a lot of other things to think about, someone’s got to buy food, find shelter, find water.”

“Basic needs can’t sustain someone like me,” Jack crossed his arms.

“Oh? Is that how it is! You’re far above things like food and shelter.” Crow punched him in the shoulder, not quite in a friendly-manner, though not quite an attack either. “ Come down and join us lowly citizens once and a while.”

“I’m not going anywhere, yet.” Jack snapped. “I’m not going to leave a job half-done.”

Crow knew what he meant, though. The three of them had been together longer than they’d been apart, now. It would be hard to imagine a morning that didn’t involve waking up and finding Jack had taken all of the blankets in the night, or to see Yuusei hadn’t slept at all. They were even getting used to Kiryuu’s constant presence in their lives.

“Things could change, don’t give up yet.” Crow flashed a grin, “I won’t let you be lazy.”

They argued a bit more, before falling into companionable silence. Eventually they ended up napping — the new place they had with Kiryuu was better than their last, a single stairway and a first floor with solid doors that had sturdy locks. Crow sprawled out across Jack and they both dreamed.


	2. Chapter 2

Years after the Ark Cradle almost crashed into Neo Domino City, most of what used to be Satellite is converted to green land. The pavement in Neo Domino can’t be broken up for it, but good soil is needed — to help create good air and clean water. It’s a set of projects that Yuusei works on, after he completes Fortune. He doesn’t know much about farming or aquifers, but he learns and it’s just as important as Momentum was.

He camps out in the fields of the project, sometimes. His coworkers find it funny, but none of them will say it to his face except to occasionally make the offhand comment — Dr. Fudou used to live here. Which is true, and none of them ever lived in Satellite, none of them know the changes that came over the area, from Zero Reverse to the present day. The current running joke is that Dr. Fudou feels closer to the land and closer to his roots when he sleeps in the dirt. None of them can be too critical of him, after all he saved the city, but almost none of them will ever forget where he grew up either.

The truth is, the stars are easier to see in the area they’re calling New Haven. It’s a pretty ridiculous name, and everyone who grew up in Satellite agrees that it doesn’t suit the area at all, even if they’re reclaiming it with greenery. Especially after they made almost everyone move out, unless they wanted to stay and be farmers. Sometimes, it seems like nothing had changed, those with authority still set the rules.

Yuusei likes to sleep out under the stars, on summer nights when the weather cools down he can look up into the sky and see light shining through the blue-violet of the night. It reminds him of painful things without being too heavy, and when he’s alone it’s easier to remember. Martha had said, that’s part of growing up, the painful things no longer hurt so much — but Yuusei was fighting that, every day.

When he stretches out under the stars at night he thinks and remembers, everything. He remembers the time before he ended up at Martha’s, traveling with a woman who’s name he no longer recalls, but he’ll never forget her face. She was kind, she had picked him out of the rubble after Zero Reverse and she couldn’t read the note that had been folded into the blanket with him, but she saved it. It was only after she got someone else to read it — found out his name was Fudou Yuusei — and that his father had been the one who caused Zero Reverse, had she abandoned him. He would never be able to blame her, of course, she had lost her son and husband in the disaster and it was only because of her that he had lived as long as he did. He hoped she was still alive and still doing well. But he’s never sought her out again.

It was only under the stars that he thinks about Kiryuu — the Kiryuu from before. When they talk during the day he’s just glad that they’re talking again. He’s happy that Kiryuu calls him and from time to time, Yuusei gets a moment to call him as well. There’s a calm solemn tone to Kiryuu’s voice that never leaves, even when he’s excited — even when he called to say that Nico and West have done well in school, that Satisfaction Town is expanding, that things are better than ever before. When the sun goes down Yuusei remembers how alive Kiryuu had been, when he first came by with a promise and a threat and Yuusei had been so enamored. Even when Kiryuu had been frothing at the mouth and yelling at him for betrayal — he’d been so alive. Yuusei uses the night to remember what he took from him and hope that he can someday return it, the vitality he stole from someone who means so much to him.

He thinks about Aki, and how she left and how he _wanted_ her to leave. They keep in touch, mostly through letters because the time difference and scheduling doesn’t work out well for phone calls. She’s happier than ever, she doesn’t regret having met him. Yuusei knows that he loves her, but under the star light he wonders how he could have failed her less. He holds onto that feeling, though, because it’s an important memory of their time together. He usually writes her letters at night, squinting at the paper and jotting down what had happened in the day, what he hoped would happen the next day, always means to write that he misses her but never seems to find the room.

The one person Yuusei tries to not think of during the night is Bruno. Antimony. Bruno. It’s rare, but at times Yuusei feels that it’s unfair to have been given such a title as someone else’s hope — he squandered that badly, didn’t he. Even with the completion of Fortune, and the work on New Haven, Yuusei wonders if there’s any real way to save the world, sometimes. But if he doesn’t that’s far worse than anything else he’s ever done.

The first winter since New Haven began comes early. Yuusei isn’t expecting it and it’s far too cold for sleeping when he lays out under the night sky. A light on the horizon catches his attention — too yellow to be the sunset but also too late and bright to be the moon rise. In a few minutes, a car pulls up and even blinded by the light Yuusei can tell that it’s white.

He knows who the driver is before the boots hit the soil. He is, however, surprised by the passenger who immediately says, “You drove over the thing he’s been working on!”

“Yuusei,” Jack ignores Crow’s aside and stands in front of the headlights of his car. 

It’s such a ridiculous situation that Yuusei starts laughing. Jack’s brows draw together, his temper has cooled somewhat in the years that they grew up, but he still isn’t a fan of being laughed at. But Crow joins Yuusei in laughter and Jack has to simply huff and wait for them to finish.

“You didn’t say you were coming home,” Yuusei stands and strides over.

“He wanted to surprise you,” Crow smirks, “And for once, I had to say it was a pretty good idea.”

“Get in,” Jack nods towards the car. “ We have some catching up to do.”

“I work tomorrow,” Yuusei offers a feeble excuse, but he can feel his own smile slowly broadening. “But you’re not going to leave me much choice, are you?”

“As if! Man, this place certainly has changed,” Crow whistles, low and soft. “Hard to believe it’s the same Satellite.”

“New Haven,” Jack corrects.

“What’s this?” Yuusei taps the hood of the car. “Your retirement vehicle?”

Jack bristles, but instead of retorting he holds out his fist. Crow’s immediately rises and bumps against Jack’s and they both turn to look at Yuusei. His hand joins theirs, and under the stars, someone says, “Welcome home.”


End file.
